Stealing Sacred Fire (39 page)

Penemue uttered a physical gasp
and opened his eyes. The pageant of his memories was eclipsed from
Sarpanita’s mind in an instant. ‘What is it?’ she asked him
aloud.

At that moment, the doors to
the chamber crashed open and several of her father’s guard tramped
inside. Sarpanita did not like them. Penemue had shown her how they
had less honour than dogs. She stood up quickly. ‘What is the
meaning of this intrusion?’ she demanded with dignity, remembering
to behave like a princess. Her women cowered about her.

Tiy came into the room and
cleared a path for herself through the guards. Sarpanita saw how
Tiy appreciated the change in her. You are nearly a woman, and a
wondrous woman at that! ‘Your Highness,’ Tiy said, ‘there is an
important visitor for Penemue.’

Sarpanita touched a hand to her
throat, as she’d seen her mother do. She knew at once who it was.
‘Then, come in.’ Behind her, she felt Penemue tense. Still! she
cried in her mind. We must be cautious.

She wanted to be tall and
aloof, her mother’s daughter, the future mother of kings, but when
Shemyaza came into the room, she sank to her knees — not through
fear or weakness, but because she could see what he was. His power
shone from him. He had been dressed in one of the gold-fringed
robes common to the court of Babylon, only the fabric was white
rather than of a primary colour. His hair hung freshly-washed over
his chest, still half dry. She saw the marks of bruises on his
face, and that he looked far more human than Penemue, yet more of a
king than her father would ever be.

‘Shemyaza,’ Penemue said aloud,
then uttered a string of sentences in a tongue Sarpanita could not
understand.

Shemyaza walked past Sarpanita
and laid a hand upon her head as he did so. She felt the burn of
his touch and was able to get to her feet. He still had not spoken.
She watched his svelte back, the bright banner of his hair against
it, as he put his hands upon the locks of the cage. For a moment,
he bowed his head in concentration, although his fingers lay
lightly against the metal. Then, the doors to the cage swung open.
Sarpanita glanced at Tiy; she was smiling benignly almost in the
manner of a woman who had just seen her son take his first
steps.

Penemue spoke again, and this time,
Sarpanita was able to see beyond the words and intuit their
meaning. Is it you? Is it really you? You look so different.

Shemyaza gazed at him silently,
then climbed up into the cage. He took Penemue in his arms, even
though he was dwarfed by him. Words at last. ‘My brother.’

Sarpanita saw that Penemue was
weeping. He was telling Shemyaza of his torment since his release
from the tomb, how he’d craved only solitude for eternity.

‘It is now a time for life,’
Shemyaza said, and his language was the universal language of the
heart. ‘Cast off your pain, Penemue.’ He ran his hands over
Penemue’s long face, pulled at his hair.

‘You are born into the body of
a human,’ Penemue said.

‘Not exactly. This is the form
we have become; Grigori. This body is of a long line of
half-breeds. The differences between us and humanity are fewer
now.’ Shemyaza turned and glanced down at Sarpanita, where she
stood outside the cage. ‘And you are the daughter of
Nimnezzar.’

‘Yes.’

Shemyaza nodded thoughtfully
for a moment, as if deciding her fate, then smiled. ‘Your future
husband is now free.’ He stepped down from the cage and gestured
for his brother to follow him. Sarpanita could tell it was hard for
Penemue to take those first steps. He had been imprisoned for so
long. He stood at the door to the cage, his hands gripping its rim,
looking out. With the potential for freedom scored upon his face,
he appeared more alien than ever, but he was afraid. Impulsively,
Sarpanita walked forward and took hold of his hands. His height
terrified her, and her slim fingers looked like the tiny paws of a
monkey in his loose grip. ‘Come, my love,’ she said, and her voice
shook only slightly.

Penemue stepped down from the cage and
for a moment her arms had to take his weight. She thought they
would break, but then his feet were upon the ground, and he was
staring over her head around the room, as if he’d never seen it
before.

‘You must care for him,
princess,’ said Shemyaza. ‘He has been away from the world a long
time, and a cage is no place to reacquaint yourself with reality.
We have work to do, but first give him the comfort of women. Teach
him your language.’

‘We need no common language,’
Sarpanita said. She leaned against Penemue’s side and his arm
enfolded her like a wing. She could hear the boom of his heart,
unnaturally loud and strong. Shemyaza joined their hands and
uttered a blessing in the ancient tongue.

‘I must leave you now,’ he
said, ‘but only for a short time.’

‘Where are you going?’
Sarpanita asked, for she guessed it was a question in Penemue’s
mind. Penemue still found it difficult to speak. ‘Tell us what is
to happen.’

‘I am about to make it happen,’
Shemyaza answered. ‘Be patient.’

‘But my father,’ Sarpanita
said, ‘my mother. What will become of them now that you are
here?’

Shemyaza glanced at Tiy, who
remained motionless. He stroked his chin for a moment, then spoke.
‘You will make a great and legendary queen.’

‘My father…’ Sarpanita
murmured, but Shemyaza was already stalking from the room. After a
moment, Tiy followed. The guards looked uneasy but made no move to
depart.

Sarpanita stood beside her
angel lord in the slanting sunlight of the early evening. The
palace seemed very still around her, not a sound. What must she
think now? Her life was fracturing, changing. She looked up at
Penemue who was gazing down at her, his face full of patience and
interest.

‘Come,’ she said, and led him
to the long windows that opened out onto a balcony festooned with
climbing vines. ‘Look, you can see some of the city from here.’ It
looked so small below them, like a child’s model.

For all his height and long
disuse of limbs, Penemue was as graceful on his feet as a deer. Out
on the balcony, he blinked against the mellow light. The guards had
followed them, but it did not matter.

‘I do not know this world,’
Penemue said to her silently. He was looking at the domes, the
minarets, the towers; so like his memory of the past, yet so
different, interpreted as it was by modern minds.

‘I do not know much of it
either,’ Sarpanita said. ‘This palace has been my life since I was
very young. I recall little before that. We must learn
together.’

‘Do not be afraid,’ Penemue
said, and touched her brow with his fingers.

‘I am not afraid,’ she
answered, and she wasn’t.

From where they stood, they
could see the Hanging Gardens spilling down from their terraces.
They could see the roofs of other, lesser palaces, where the men
whom Nimnezzar had made into nobles lived with their families. They
could see the Museum of the Ancients and the basalt statues that
adorned its roof. They could see the long, straight roads that cut
through the city, fitting around market quarters, residential areas
and parks. The walls of Babylon, some miles away, glinted with gold
leaf. Nearer, they saw the temple, Etemenanki, dominating the sky.
Smoke rose from its summit, high into the sky, thin and twisted
like a tortured djinn.

The temple of Etemenanki smoked against
the evening sky, as if a thousand offerings burned upon its altars.
The royal party walked along the processional road that led to the
temple steps. Magians led the way, holding lit torches and waving
thuribles of incense. Behind them came their acolytes with shaven
heads, scattering petals. Next came the king, dressed in his finest
robes and attended by a group of male attendants. Behind him,
Jazirah, with the key held in both hands. Shemyaza walked at
Jazirah’s heels, his head tilted back to take in the unimaginable
sight of the temple. The party was followed by a formation of
palace guards.

Shemyaza could feel Jazirah’s
fear as if it exuded from his spine like a skein of ill-smelling
smoke. When the time came, the vizier would not be strong enough to
control the power of the key. He was a cunning and forceful man,
and therefore clever enough to know that Nimnezzar was demanding
from him a performance beyond his capabilities. Shemyaza almost
pitied him. Greed had brought Jazirah low. But for that vice he
would not have heeded Nimnezzar’s call and hurried to his court to
glut himself on Babylonian luxuries. He would undoubtedly still be
practising the ancient rites upon the altars of a hidden temple
somewhere in India. There would be a price to pay for that
desertion.

The party passed through the
ceremonial gates of Etemenanki and walked across the smooth
flag-stones of its outer court. Before them, a steep ramp soared
upwards to the initial tier of the building. The Magians poured up
the ramp in their scarlet robes, trailing perfume and fire.
Shemyaza paused at the bottom and breathed deeply. Nimnezzar looked
back. ‘Why do you linger?’ he demanded.

‘I can smell the cedar wood
that burns on the altar of the shrine up there,’ Shemyaza replied.
‘It reminds me of home.’

Nimnezzar made an irritated
sound, glancing keenly at Shem’s face. He seemed unnerved by the
fact that Shemyaza’s bruises seemed to have faded greatly already.
‘If you attempt trickery, I will have you killed.’

Shemyaza looked at him
directly. ‘Your vizier holds the key, not I.’

Jazirah’s face indicated how
little he enjoyed the privilege.

They began the ascent of the
great ramp. Beyond the first tier, thousands of steps led up to
higher levels. It would take at least an hour to climb to the top
of the ziggurat.

Shemyaza overtook Jazirah to
climb beside the king. ‘You have recreated the past so well,’ he
remarked. ‘In your position, I would have installed an elevator,
perhaps, or a moving stairway.’

Nimnezzar clearly sensed
sarcasm, but Shemyaza kept his face sublime. The king did not to
respond to the comment.

On the first terrace, they
entered the temple, and here mute junior priests clad in sepia
robes brought refreshment to them. The temple was gloomy, lit only
by the light of candles. Tall columns disappeared into the
darkness. The air had been hot, but now a cool breeze snaked into
the building. Jazirah shivered. ‘I smell a storm,’ he said.

‘Good.’ Shemyaza went out into
the darkening sunlight. The sky was becoming occluded by clouds. He
had not summoned them himself, but he felt that someone had. The
clouds tumbled about the sky, already muttering with thunder. Tiy
came to his side. ‘Let me take your arm for the next stage of the
climb,’ she said.

Shemyaza hooked her fingers
through his elbow. ‘Are these your clouds I see above me, mother
Tiy?’

She laughed. ‘I cannot own the
sky.’

Shemyaza glanced down at her.
He still wondered whether she had actually carried him in her body
or was simply the victim of a delusion. Still, she had advised him
well, imbued him with courage. She appeared to know about the
Grigori. Whether she was mad or not, she had helped him in an hour
of need.

The knowledge Tiy had given him
concerning how the Grigori had manipulated his conception and
covertly directed the path of his life was not a pleasing
revelation. He hoped it was untrue, a paranoid theory, but some
part of him was all too aware how likely it was. The Grigori were
skilled in intrigue and conspiracy. It made him wonder whether
Nimnezzar’s rise to power had also been organised by some nefarious
Grigori cabal. Nothing seemed impossible now. He could only follow
his instincts.

By the time the royal party
reached the seventh final tier, the evening had become black,
although a weak and troubled sunlight still fought its way through
the gloom. The light was altogether eerie. Shemyaza experienced a
strong sense of déjà vu. This was the light that had haunted the
earth in the days before Anu had released the Deluge to cleanse the
land of the Nephilim warriors. Shemyaza could smell ozone in the
air.

Etemenanki’s summit was a wide,
flat expanse of open air temple. It was adorned only by a large
cubic altar of green stone. Here, a fire of cedar wood burned.

Nimnezzar approached Shemyaza,
eyeing with disdain Tiy’s fingers, which were still hooked through
Shemyaza’s elbow. Perhaps he wondered why his seeress seemed to
have developed a friendship with the angel lord so quickly.
‘Shemyaza,’ Nimnezzar said, ‘you must now tell us how to use the
stone.’

Shemyaza took Tiy’s fingers
from his arm. ‘Your priest must hold it up to the sky and summon
down the lightning.’

Jazirah expelled a caustic
laugh. ‘Do you think I am so stupid?’ he snapped. ‘If I do that, I
will be burned!’

Shemyaza raised his eyebrows.
‘But that is the way to empower the stone, the way it has always
been empowered.’

‘And was the sacrifice of
priests part of that empowerment?’ Jazirah said.

Shemyaza shook his head. ‘If
the right person holds the stone, there is no danger.’

Jazirah uttered a contemptuous
snort. ‘It is a trick, Great King. He plans to see me, your vizier,
killed.’

‘Silence!’ Nimnezzar snapped.
‘Jazirah, do as Shemyaza tells you.’

Jazirah stared at the king for
a moment, then made an effort to smother his fury. He turned to
Shemyaza with a thin smile. ‘Very well. You must tell me the
correct incantations and gestures.’

‘There are none,’ Shemyaza
replied.

‘None? How else is the
lightning summoned?’

‘With your heart, Jazirah.’

The vizier glared at Shemyaza
for a few moments, then stalked to the altar at the centre of the
platform. Here, he composed himself, and stood motionless with
erect spine, focusing his energy. Shemyaza realised the man had
some idea of what he was supposed to do. Jazirah held the key stone
up to the sky in both hands. He closed his eyes.